“You need dual power. You must resist on one hand, but you have to build and create on the other hand.”

In December, I caught up with anarchist organizer and author scott crow when he stopped by my house to drop off some copies of his book “Emergency Hearts, Molotov Dreams,” which I gave away to my Patreon patrons. I took the opportunity to talk with crow about American politics and antifa after a year of the Trump regime. In the previous part of this interview, I got crow’s thoughts on the media, so in this part I’ll focus on our conversation about everyday antifascism and the limitations of antifascist tactics.

The historic rise of American antifascism

Though he describes himself as retired from it now, crow spent years
engaged in antifascism and antiracist activism. His work as a founding
member of the Common Ground Collective grew out of his armed resistance
to racist mobs that were threatening people of color in New Orleans’
poorest neighborhoods in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

However, many of the groups he worked with in the past avoided words
like “antifa,” which were already in widespread use in Europe but
unfamiliar stateside. The speed with which these concepts and tactics
have entered American culture after the last election is quite
remarkable.

“The rise of antifascism in the way we have seen is something that is
pretty historic in the United States,” crow said. He also cited the
“militancy” of modern activists, an increasing number of whom seem
willing to shut down white supremacy, extractive capitalism and other
harmful forces through the use of confrontational tactics.

“I’m not saying that people haven’t been militant but it’s much broader now.”

Where fascism was once something of a foreign concept to Americans,
it’s now a concept that’s helped reframe major aspects of left activism:

Antifascism has really just become the the broader rubric
that we’re all engaged in, what we’re all doing. You could call it
antimperialism, antiglobalization, antineoliberalism, these are all the
different facets of it that have come before. It’s the latest
reiteration of the last 20 years or so.

‘That’s everyday antifascism’

Wearing
matching khakis and blue polo shirts, with many in masks, nazis from
the group Patriot Front briefly rallied outside Monkeywrench Books on
November 4, 2017. In an act of everyday antifascism, neighbors and
passers by chased them off after a brief photo op. (Facebook /
Monkeywrench Books)

In addition to abruptly becoming culturally relevant, antifascists won measurable victories in 2017, driving nazis off the streets
and making large scale, Charlottesville-style fascist rallies largely
untenable. “Antifascist ideas took root really fast. People put the
tactics into play, put the actions into play very quickly over the last
year and a half and I think that’s really important.”

crow continued:

And it also created a space where those who would not
engage in those ideas were able to see some validity in it, which we’ve
never gotten before. So even people who were straight-ticket Democrats
in electoral politics, even if they disagree with fighting in the
streets they were able to go, “you’ve given us space to go oh my gosh we
need to fight fascists on these other fronts,” whether that’s the
choice of access to abortion, immigration, the nationalism that’s
happening right now. They are able to fight it in their own way, again,
given this sort of permission because kids are willing to fight in the
streets.

As one example we discussed, when nazis from the group “Patriot Front” mobilized in front of the local anarchist bookstore, Monkeywrench Books,
the shopkeepers of other local stores and people shopping in the area
confronted the white supremacists, a sign that normal people feel
empowered and recognize the importance of acting.

“That’s everyday antifascism, when all the other people come out to say ‘fuck you, get the fuck out of here.’”

However, the White Supremacist In Chief and all those he’s put in power remain in power.

You can’t build movements on antifascism

“A reporter asked me the other day — they’re like can you build
movements on antifascism? I said no, because it’s a reactive set of
ideas, and strategies and tactics that are really good for this very
limited thing, which is confrontation and bringing witness, if you want
to use that term, to egregious exclusion — neo-nazis and fascists of all
forms.”

Rather than a movement in its own right, antifascism is a tactic, a
reaction to the presence of a specific danger to our communities and
their most vulnerable members. “There are limits to it because it is a
politics of reacting to something that is rising or fear of something
that may become bigger.”

crow feels that the left in the U.S. doesn’t spend enough energy
trying to build something radically new. “Largely, we’re stuck in the
politics of resistance, of trying to stop the bleeding, trying to stop
the onslaughts that are happening to immigrants, to women, to
undocumented people, to prisoners, to queer people, you can just go down
the list right?”

He added:

We do that fairly well. We’re great fire brigades. But I
think if we really want to stop this stuff, we need to begin to think
about what is it, how is it we want to build our power.

How do we want to build autonomy? How do we want to build resilience,
not just for myself or my group or my campaign, but larger than that?
In my neighborhood, in my community, in my overlapping communities that
I’m in, and then in the cities where we live, because we still live in
cities right now.